Legacy of Kain Opus
by Lilith Marx
Summary: A collective work of short stories detailing the perspectives of various characters left not pursued by the game developers.
1. From the Diary of Janos Audron

Janos On His Origins and the Hylden Wars

Prologue  
From the diary of Janos Audron

Dear diary,

Today I have the strangest of tales to tell you. Waxing nostalgic in my advanced age, I feel as if it is time to detail the events leading up to my Eldergod forsaken residence in the Uschtenheim mountains. My duty to you, dearest diary, is to relay it all with as clear insight as has been my duty all these years.

I was born a poor blue child to Di'Jina and Azzerbyjohnathon Audron in a humble shanty in the shantiest of shanty towns, Ova, on the western shore of the Lake of Tears; it was a suburb of the Ancient Vampire Citadel, or as we called it in Ova, "Boologg Citayy."

We were of modest stature, but our wings were as glossy and pure as our blackened hearts. I had an average childhood, overall – neither excelling nor failing at flight; however, I found myself prevailing among my peers in the arts of magic and enchantery.

It was my parents' hope that I would become a small claims attorney, focusing my utmost attention on the matters of rent collection and child support payments.

I wanted to be a dancer. Each night, by the tranquil sobs of the Lake of Tears, I too wept on the lapping shores as my tender cloven feet expressed themselves upon the sand. They taught me the many tongues of la danza, the most evocative of them all being the ecstatic jazzercismo. By day I was a mere schoolboy. By night I pranced lightly upon the wailing waters.  
But that was not enough in this land's state – not with these dastardly wars. It was never enough to be happy. My dreams of becoming the finest dancer were crushed with the damnation of soldiery. I prayed each night that the Eldergod's Wheel of Fate might for me churn out a new destiny. But all was in vain.

The seemingly never-ending battle between the Vampires and the Hylden was coming to a head. They, the scoundrels who had denounced our Lord, had ignited a holy war the likes of which Nosgoth had never seen. Blood soaked the lands – both Hylden and Vampire alike suffered greatly. By the end of my youth, the Vampires had gained the upper hand and devised a solution to the Hylden plight.

Our most competent sorcerers would banish the lot of them to a nightmarish realm. Though one wonders why such a plan had not been brought forth decades ago, then was not the time for critiquing the Boologgian aristocracy.

I was among them, and together we tore a dangerously-sized rift into the surprisingly chilly depths of Hell into which we would stuff the entirety of the Hylden race. What remained was luring them, one by one, to enter the darkness. That was the sacred duty of Hallatosys, the Vampire herald of doom.

Posing as a Vampire defector, he attempted to gain the Hylden leaders' trust and inform them of the Vampires' final solution which would end the war once and for all. He told them the truth.

Hallatosys was, in fact, a perfectly sincere traitor, and had every intention of telling the Hylden of the Vampires' actual plan. He had been chastised his entire life for his scaly gray feathers and was quite fed up with their bigotry. His youthful suffering led him to betray his entire race, presumably unaware that the ensuing genocide would most likely include his own death as well.

Fortunately for myself and my people, Hallatosys proved an ineffective informant and was promptly executed for both trying to plant false information, and generally being an asshole. The Hylden marched immediately for the rift, thinking that the turncoat had been sent to mislead the Hyldens into avoiding the aberration, as it must have contained a secret Vampire weapon.

Never having anticipated that our foe would be so quick to seal their own fate, the Vampires had only secured a loose perimeter around the rift. The angry Hylden horde, vastly outnumbering the Vampire contingent, broke the camp quickly and held us sorcerers hostage, forcing us to keep the portal open.

Nadaberan, who laughed at their request, had his wings ripped off. The rest of us kept our puzzled amusement to ourselves as we strained to keep the rift intact for our captors. Unsure as to what they expected to find inside other than their perpetual banishment and eternal abdominal discomfort, we did our best to fulfill their commands as they one by one danced triumphantly into oblivion.

Whether from sheer exhaustion or quintessential sympathy, I cannot say, but I remember feeling a single chartreuse tear trickle down my azure cheek in a moment of utter jealousy—they danced and they were free.

Once the last of the Hylden had followed their kin like sheep to the cold alternate dimension, we had ourselves a good laugh and wondered what old briny-feathers had to have said to convince them to abandon this world in such a passionate ardor.  
It was at this time we heard the shrieking, as though a million Hylden souls cramped behind a pane of dimensionally thick glass. In retrospect, the congratulations might have been better suited till we'd truly sewed the rift closed. For, it was then that the exiled Hylden sent us their sadist's parting gift: the curse of a people tricked into skipping merrily to their doom.  
As such, a horrible fever overtook us all, and we underwent a terrible transformation which would forever scar our race.

The Blood Curse, as it came to be called. The first effect hit us the hardest—sterilization. For a single second the dirge of barren wombs and impotent, well, you know…filled the trembling air and vanished with a sigh. The silence was taken up by a sound like roaring fire, a beastly urge for blood. I took this development in stride, as our culture's cuisine had never been much to my liking. I was unsure as of yet if lifeblood would be more palatable, but I saw this as an improvement nevertheless.

Immortality sucked awkwardly at our skin, hermetically sealing our souls into our bodies with relentless indifference. And our flesh buzzed and burned at sunlight's touch. No more were we to walk beneath the sun's warm rays. But the worst, yes, far worse still than this was yet to come.

Our greatest frailty was that we were no longer able to bear even the slightest mist of water upon our skin. And with the capability to bathe also went my greatest joy: dancing atop the water's depths under a sullen, starry sky.

The full implications of the curse were only understood on the following Tuesday morning at the traditional Eldergod Mass. From the depths of the earth emerged our Eldergod's pastorly tentacle. It wriggled timidly, as though with reluctant omens. First right, then left, then slowly undulating from side to side without any particular rhythm, it portended great sorrow for our kind. As the tentacle-augurs consulted the sacred scrolls, their eyes saddened with each languid, swooping motion. Our newfound immortality, he squiggled, was an affront to nature. Our Eldergod, our Wheel of Fate, our past and present and future, forsook us with a final shimmy of abandonment, casting we Vampires into despair.

It soon became clear to us that lest our enemies should bewitch us once more from beyond the veil with even more devastating consequences, we needed to ensure the permanent separation between our world and theirs. Thus, the Pillars were crafted and bound by the greatest mages, including myself.

The Pillars were built to be linked with each aspect of this earth: balance, conflict, mind, death, time, alchemy, energy, nature, and dimensions. I had argued that we could probably get away with simply dimensions, all things considered. However, my kin took the construction of the Pillars as a means to restructure Nosgoth and ensure its prosperity. Time and again I had warned our leaders of the great risks associated with constructing physical embodiments of abstract ideas; Eldergod forbid if something should happen to them!

As a fail-safe for my admonition, the Vampire elders appointed representatives to fill the role of Guardians for each Pillar, a group which came to be known as the Circle of Nine.

I was too astounded by their stupidity to suggest that this development arguably exacerbated the original problem.  
My people lamented with the abandonment of our most merciful Lord, but I was reminded of the stories of my youth, as told by my wise and compassionate mother, Di'Jina. Before bedtime, she would often recount to me the grand tales of the ancient Vampire prophecies and the Vampire champion, who would one day regain the favor of the Eldergod and sustain the Wheel of Fate. Thus, during such sorrowful times I would tell my kin to recall these prophecies from our past – the Vampire champion will come! But people had lost faith; however, I had not. Therefore, I took it upon myself to forge our prodigal hero's weapon: the Reaver. This, the weapon which would forever—

It appears as though I will have to finish this entry tomorrow as I have a visitor knocking on my door.


	2. The Book of Kain

THE BOOK OF KAIN

After long months of searching, Kain had at last found it—the Time Guardian Moebius' Chronoplast Chamber. As it turns out, it was rather hard to miss, emanating a palpable odor that can only be described as being both incredibly old and unbelievably fresh. Kain should also have thought to look under the fields where the trees never died and the wildlife never aged, a landscape anyone would characterize with the word "timeless." Regardless, it had now been found, and he could always go back in time to have found it faster.

The cavernous relic showed Moebius' gaudy tastes—not everything needs to be gilded in gold. Indeed, it seemed as though every surface shone brightly, save one conspicuous wall, upon which Kain found a mural of the most disturbing caliber. His undead eyes had seen much in his time as a kingly vampire, but nothing in his perilous past had prepared him for something quite like this.

A handsome mosaic of precious gemstones depicted a striking youth gallivanting through saffron meadows, bursting with vitality and virility. This did not concern Kain. Where there might have been a comely face was Moebius' loathsomely aged visage. Robust ruby lips were replaced with thin strips of pale amethyst. A clear quartz complexion was replaced with sickly citrine pallor. Strong diamond jaws were just flabby jasper jowls. The whole illustration was made markedly worse by Moebius' playful attempt at a smile.

Shuddering, Kain quickly set about deciphering the controls of the Chronoplast and rid his mind of the blasphemy it had just witnessed.

Moebius had never been given enough credit for working with this contraption, and for a moment, Kain wondered how he'd managed to dispatch a man with the ability to thwart his own death. The machine was nonsensical at its most intuitive, and Kain struggled greatly to put it in any sort of working order. His mission, of course, was to secure his future as ruler of a dying Nosgoth. Miscellaneous levers and buttons screamed to be pressed in no particular order, and a large whirring contraption affixed to the chamber's center stirred occasionally as if of its own accord. He pushed, pulled, punched, bit, and cursed the machinations to no avail. In a moment of blind frustration, Kain took out his anger on the closest dials, which by this time had been punctured by a multitude of bite marks. This resulted in a contented purring noise followed by excitedly screeching whirrs from the central chamber. Kain smirked and began kicking madly at all the dials.

Nothing else came of it, but it was cathartic.

At last, Kain spotted the only lever left untouched, appropriately located beside the portal-shaped indentation on the wall. Kain looked shiftily back at Moebius' creepy mural and found the thin-lipped chronomancer grimacing at him.

Hitting the switch, Kain was unsure of what came next, but as the cogs and wheels chugged faster and faster behind him, he screamed "FUTURE" in an uncertain voice, and jumped into the timestream.

The lever, which he had beaten into the "PAST" setting, politely disagreed, and sent Kain spiraling into a dark, moist place he dimly remembered in the darkest, most placenta-filled recesses of his mind.

Kain felt sick—utterly disgusted as he came to the sudden realization of where he was. Uncertain as to how he could conceivably fit in his mother's womb beside his fetal self, Kain chalked it up to magic. It was wet and slimy; the creepy fetus did not make his situation any better. Thus, the kicking and punching commenced. Kain became responsible for his own premature birth and the death of his twin.

And then there was light.

And spanking.

There was a flash of blue light that smelt oddly like a spruced up used vehicle (whatever that is) and suddenly Kain found himself at his eighth birthday party. The vampire lord bitterly remembered this event – and now he had to relive the solitude of his boyhood once more as his eight year-old self celebrated with a stray goat, who was only interested in him for his estate's well-manicured lawn. Oh, the anguish and bitter hatred this boy felt for the world and particularly this goat—the goat which would symbolize his failures and loneliness throughout his eternal life. Kain still did not understand why no one showed up: he invited Elkdu, who he had playfully robbed of his wooden horse (not to ride—Kain had _real_ horses); he invited Hashuwanama, who he had so kindly mocked for having dead parents (she was ugly anyway); and he had invited his parents, but they were busy—they were always busy. Kain knew that this was his second chance to realize his childhood dream. It hadn't played out so well the first time.

In order to fill the void within his life, the boy would often converse with inanimate objects, having long abandoned speaking to animals, since all of his horses, however real, proved poor listeners. At night, he would think about all those wonderful conversations he had with the fence post on his lawn, which ultimately kindled Kain's desire to become a famous ventriloquist, giving a voice to that which had none—not at all in a democratic sense: Kain and his family were staunch Republicans. Kain merely longed for friends who said exactly what he wanted them to say. It was this goal that inspired Kain to practice for hours upon hours each day, attempting to perfect the art of ventriloquism, and one day break free of his privileged life.

But with the knowledge of how his childhood would pan out, Kain knew he would have to change the past before he turned eighteen. As it stood, he would stand outside his mansion, an adult, equipped with nothing but a pack, some food, and a dream. He would say goodbye to the fields, the distant mountains, and even that pernicious goat. He would be ready to leave Coorhagen forever. This would be the night Kain was to abscond with a band of traveling gypsies and start anew a nomadic circus life. As fate would have it, however, the gypsies would pick up a more accomplished ventriloquist that very evening. Elkdu would ride past in miming triumph on his sad pole of a horse. He sifted through one of his massive toy chests to uncover the stolen wooden horse and placed it outside of Elkdu's rundown little shack with a note: "You will be a wonderful shepherd someday."

Blue.

Now he stood outside his mansion, equipped with nothing but a pack, some food, and a foolproof dream. He said goodbye to the fields, the distant mountains, but not that goat—not this time. He was really ready to leave Coorhagen. As fate would have it, however, the gypsies had entirely scrapped the ventriloquist act in favor of a ghastly sideshow: Hashuwanama, whose anti-pulchritude had only blossomed during her pubescent years, would take the stage to showcase her illustrious beard. He had had such hope, such optimism—but all for naught. The goat chewed its cud mockingly. Kain had failed again and his only recourse was to drown his pain at the local tavern in Ziegsturhl, as he had before. Only this time, he knew what awaited him there, and he would be ready.

Or, he would have been ready, had he not gotten so unbelievably drunk. This time, when the brigands showed up to taunt him into a fight, he could see why he had died. There were at least twenty-five fully grown men pit against a drunken teenager. Incensed by his doubly denied dream, he challenged them all simultaneously, much to their confusion.

The battle lasted approximately thirty-six seconds, or as long as it takes for twenty-five men to overrun and brutally murder an eighteen year-old noble. As Kain lay there dying for the second time, he wondered why he hadn't gone to the town's other tavern, which was a substantially better run establishment in any case, and recalled how unpleasant it was to die.

This blue interlude was punctuated by flickers of flame, bargains, and evil laughter.

He awoke in his family tomb and felt the stifling air of immortality on his skin and the faint beat of a black heart in his chest.


	3. Kain's Luxuriant Locks

Kain's Luxuriant Locks

"But MOM!" Kain groaned. "Why can't we hire someone to cut my hair? I don't like the way you do it!"

"That's enough, dear. I'll be the one cutting your hair, since your father lost all that money in that failed venture into Elzevir's animated dolls. We can't even afford Helga anymore, and she barely knew how to wield shears."

"...Neither do you..." Kain muttered under his breath.

The shears in his mother's hand gleamed menacingly as they drew ever nearer to his head. Kain, utterly frightened, was forced to sit still as his mother violently shorn off large portions of his hair in odd patterns. Kain protested again, but to no avail: his mother would only tell him that she'd ask Elkdu's family if Kain could sleep over for the week. With this threat, Kain shuddered and promptly sat silently as his mother destroyed what was left of his hair.

It was absolutely ugly. That maid with Parkinson's would have done a better job.

He would hear no end of it from the lupus-ridden village urchins.

It was no secret that his mother was a useless trophy wife. Her unskilled hands had made a mockery of his once fair locks. Long strands drifted like lazy spider silk in the soft breeze amid a spiky crop of mangled hair corpses, cut down in their prime.

At best, the hairstyle could be described as completely nonsensical, which, being a poor description itself, suits the unnamable monstrosity Kain's hair had become.

As he walked down the hall, away from the fourth-tier living room of his mansion where his mother had concluded her profane act of aggression against his innocent, undeserving head, he could feel the pitiful gazes of the servants upon him. Only this time the pity was directed at him, not by him. One maid even stopped to tousle his maimed head with a look of sheer disgust when her hand made contact with the putrescence that had become his scalp. Kain's entitled seven-year old mind was not accustomed to receiving pity, only doling it out.

It was dreadful, even more so by the fact that his mother was now asking him to run errands - this is a pauper's chore! Kain was sure she was enjoying this form of sick torture, just as Kain often enjoyed mocking the goats before their slaughter. It must run in the family. Thus, Kain was forced to venture forth into the village to check the weather. This was no simple task, as it involved journeying to the center of town so as to monitor the behavior of the village weathervane-which Kain's family had sponsored. Why they had not built it on Kain's estate, was a question as unanswerable as how to describe his hair without gagging.

Kain tried not to notice the stifled gags of the civilians as he made his way toward the center of town. Even Elkdu was there, that stupid pleb - and how dare he laugh at Kain's plight! Only Kain was allowed to delight in the misfortune of others. The taunts became so severe that soon they became a rain of stones showering his ears and battering his fragile self-esteem. Soon afterward they became a rain of actual stones: people were stoning him for his hideous visage. Babies cried. Children sobbed. Mothers wept. Kain was a monster - a monster whose head had given birth to a wilted squid. It was sunny with a light northeasterly breeze.

It was on that sunny day Kain vowed to never let his damned mother touch a single strand of his magnificent hair ever again. And Kain cried the last tears he would ever cry for the sake of his hair.

Until today.

It had been thousands of years since the incident, and though it pained him to recall it after all these years, he'd long since learned to stifle the tears. Now he was supreme regent of Nosgoth, and no one had dared mock his hair. Nor had they cause to-Kain had kept his promise to himself all these years, and despite the fact that his mother had been dead for the vast majority of his time as a vampire, Kain had gone so far as to obliterate her corpse so as to ensure her bony hands could never again wield a pair of scissors against him. His hair flowed like mercury down his robust shoulders with a sheen that said "bitch, I'm fabulous. deal with it."

But today. Today he emerged from his evolutionary slumber. And he was made whole at last by the image at which he marveled in the mirror: perfection.

His hair shone even brighter than ever before and its touch was like the finest of silks. He was going to make his sons totes jealous. As he walked to the throne room (read: skipped), Kain felt the instinctual urge to make his first attempts at the hair flip, a source of both raw, untamed power and general fabulousness. Whatever he might have lacked in the past as a leader, his hair had made up for tenfold. He would definitely command everyone's attention and appreciation now!

In his glee, Kain had slammed himself into the pillar of Time mid-hair-flip on his journey to his regal seat. But only Melchiah was there, so no one actually saw it (no one important, anyway).

He barked at his lowliest son to convene his older and more handsome brethren for an audience at which they would display their new Dark Gifts. He did this by rapidly shaking his head, and from his languid hair rose the sweet strain of the finest violins, the deep resonant call of exquisite trumpets, and a masterful all-boys chorus which sang his command.

Luckily he'd stopped the heavenly orchestra of his hair before it betrayed his underlying purpose in calling the meeting: Kain couldn't wait shit on his sons' new abilities. What could trump the power of his luxurious locks of sublime silver?

Melchiah was the first to display his Dark Gift to Kain. However, Melchiah's new Gift was as pitiful as it was pointless. He knelt before Kain and merely smiled. It was a horrendous sight. The teeth that Melchiah displayed to his sire were rotted, shifted oddly, and were incredibly blunt. Three of his incisors were missing and Melchiah's disgusting visage was made more so by the new presence of buck teeth apparently stolen from the carcass of a long dead beaver. Kain could not help but think that perhaps Melchiah had stolen these teeth from Elkdu's corpse, for they were the spitting image. Melchiah, still kneeling, wanted greatly to please his father with his new Gift, but quickly realized his hope was crushed when Kain nearly vomited at the sight of his new pearly whites and quickly called for Zephon to enter.

Zephon looked only slightly different than he had in the months prior to the transformations. He seemed to catch the light strangely, and almost glow. Kain wondered if his second-least-loved son had acquired a bizarre form of bioluminescence. In fact, Zephon had undergone a metamorphosis that had greatly augmented his sense of touch-to a painful fault. A fine layer of short, bristly hairs had covered him from head to toe-HEAD TO TOE. Always a sensitive vampire in spirit, Zephon was newly hypersensitive to all manner of movement and touch. His frequent bouts of itching were also alarming as he howled at his own attempts at relief. His was truly a tortured existence. Having seen enough of his son's twitching, Kain summoned Rahab into the circle in hopes of a more impressive Gift.

Kain sincerely wished he could say that he was impressed with Rahab's evolution, but the weird rhythmic whinings that were Rahab's attempts to feel the surrounding areas were just embarrassing to watch. Rahab was standing before his sire and brethren moaning in odd pitches and frequencies and getting frustrated with the less than satisfactory results he received. He swore he gained the Gift of sonar, but for some reason it did not seem to be working. Kain, growing bored and greatly uncomfortable watching such an odd display, dismissed Rahab and called in his next son quite hesitantly, a little fearful of what Gift will be shown next.

For all intents and purposes, Dumah looked especially unchanged. If anything, he looked more like he looked before than ever before. Indeed he was so strikingly unchanged that Kain was intrigued as to what might have been his Gift. Dumah seemed strangely stiff, and while he'd never been much of a socialite over the course of the last millenium, Kain ordered him to loosen up. Dumah gave no response other than a nervous chortle. The more Kain studied his son, the more he perceived a sense of immense strain, as though Dumah's bones could not withstand his own girth. Indeed, they could not. With a cascade of crunches, Dumah collapsed swiftly into himself. Like a train wreck, Kain could only sit there, eyes helplessly riveted to his son's implosion. Once he'd desensitized himself to Dumah's Gift of Unnecessary Density, he called for Turel, the second strongest of his sons to grab a broom and sweep his brother's heavy debris into a corner, and perhaps under a rug. After struggling with the legendary load of his brother's bones, Turel returned to the circle to exhibit his own ludicrous Gift.

Turel was quite proud of his Dark Gift - a little too proud for his family's liking. Turel, in front of everyone, took a deep breath and let out a hearty high pitched screeching noise for all to hear. To Kain's ears, the wails were seemingly the product of a banshee and a hyena joining together to scratch their nails along chalkboards while having unconscionably kinky sex. This horrible sound continued for another long two minutes before Turel stopped. They all stood there in silence, staring at Turel, wondering what the fuck they just listened to. Turel merely stood with his head held high, a smirk upon his face, believing sincerely that he had won his father's favor with such a wondrous gift. Kain, utterly terrified at this point and thinking of becoming bats and bailing, called in the last son to show his Gift.

Kain's expectations were reasonably low. This last bout of the Dark Gift, with the exception of his bountiful hair, had been a disturbingly disappointing one. Raziel ascended the stairs to the pillar dias and as he did, a chorus arose, a delightful cacophony of sounds which echoed playfully from the walls of the sanctuary. Had he gained the Gift of Angelic Entourage? No, the voices, though of no apparent source, emanated from Raziel himself. He had acquired a Gift most sought after by Kain: multi-vociferous ventriloquism. Kain's heart stopped. Again. Visions of childhood dreams being crushed flashed before his eyes. His hair seemed less lustrous now that Kain's own son had achieved the one lifelong dream he himself desired. Kain was bitter with anger, with memories of Elkdu and that damned goat laughing and braying. Kain was no longer vampire lord of Nosgoth, he was that little eight year-old boy whose dreams had crashed down on him like a great tidal wave of hopelessness and despair. Amid the chaotic harmony bursting from Raziel's unmoving lips, Kain became bats and flew far away from his sons. Nobody could see his tears. Bat eyes are small.


End file.
